


I’ll Feel the Power (But You Won’t)

by lapetitemort20



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Heartbreak, Songfic, farewell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 03:36:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lapetitemort20/pseuds/lapetitemort20
Summary: The sweetest goodbye...





	I’ll Feel the Power (But You Won’t)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rookandpawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rookandpawn/gifts), [Walkinrobe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walkinrobe/gifts), [echoesofstardust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoesofstardust/gifts), [ExcuseMeMissT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExcuseMeMissT/gifts), [mycatcanwrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mycatcanwrite/gifts).

> Not going to lie, my heart broke a little this week. But, I channeled it into this. 
> 
> It’s a song fic based on the Mother of All Breakup songs - Bonnie Raitt’s ‘I Can’t Make You Love Me’. For extra heartbreak, I suggest listening to the song before or during or after reading (or basically on repeat). 
> 
> This is for the OLC who are a constant light to me. I couldn’t have done this without RookandPawn, who cheered me on throughout. This is also for ExcuseMeMsT and MyCatCanWrite.

**(_Song link [here](https://open.spotify.com/track/69uJi5QsBtqlYkGURTBli8?si=DX7D-8knQKuWmVifVcxkIg) or [here](https://youtu.be/nW9Cu6GYqxo)_)**

There’s a knock at the door. It’s hesitant, soft even, but it’s there. There’s a spare key that could open it, but it feels symbolic not to use it.

He waits. She’ll answer.

Eventually.

He doesn’t have to wait too long because the door opens in a few beats and she’s a silhouette in the doorway.

He pauses. Is it still okay to slide in past her, dropping a quick kiss on her temple? It doesn’t feel appropriate somehow, not anymore.

She eyes him warily, but steps aside to let him in. She looks exhausted, if he’s being honest. Like she hasn’t slept, or has been crying.

Maybe it’s because he feels the same. Maybe he’s projecting. Maybe he’s not. Maybe there have been too many maybes and it’s led them here.

The end of the road.

He had called her needing to talk. She knows what he’s going to say though and it’s not talking that they will do. 

They stand awkwardly in her living room. A lifetime of memories in between them. All they ever had to do was take that one step towards each other, but like so many times on the ice, their final position is turned away or drifting apart, grasping at the what-could-have-beens.

Is this it - their last curtain call? It certainly has that air of finality. And after tomorrow, it will be. Tomorrow he will tell her. But for tonight, he just wants to forget the future and the past, and all the hurt that fills up the empty instances.

He lifts his eyes to look at her. Across the chasm he tries to see the love he feels reflected in hers. There’s love there, but it’s _not_ the one he wants. She’s loved him, all these years, in her own way,but it’s never been enough for him.

Therein lies the heartbreak. He can’t make her love him, if she doesn’t.

He’s stuck in the past, boxed in a love for a woman he can’t have. The only way he’s able to move on is if he exorcises his demons in order to free himself. To open his heart and fall in love with another, one that could be his future. A future with a flash of a ring and the sound of children.

It’s an imperceptible shift of constellations. A tinder striking a match. The slight flex of her fingers that unlocks their stagnancy. Despite the schism, they still have the ability to read each other like the back of their own hands. There’s that, at least.

And so he strides across the divide to claim her mouth as his own, for the last time. She wraps her legs around his waist, their hands in each other’s hair, mouths searching and not quite finding, out of sync bodies seeking a closeness that comes from desperation in one and adoration in the other.

They’ve done this before, once. And they’ll do it once again to bookend the moments.

(No one can ever accuse them of not playing out the drama.)

They’re both eloquent in speech, but their essence has always been touch, their language of love. It’s only apt that the farewell that they bid each other is through movement and convergence.

He carries her to her bedroom. He keeps the light off. He wants to feel her, rather than see her. Time stands still, and he moves slowly. He won’t rush these final hours.

He wants to endure the power of every touch.

Every sigh.

Every breath.

Tonight when he makes love to her, it’ll be an act of forgetting. An act of forgiveness, and perhaps even redemption. But what he doesn’t know is that he’ll commit her to memory the way a brand sears into skin. Burnished forever, always present to leave her mark upon him.

They begin to undress each other wordlessly.

His hands are on hers as she slides them down his chest, down to the hem and she peels off his black T-shirt. Looking into his eyes has never been more difficult. He makes it easier by closing them.

She moves to take her tank top off. He stops her with his hand, as if to say _leave it_. They are bare aside from that and it’s almost a metaphor of how they’ve navigated through this non-relationship for years. There was always something that got in the way.

He cups the back of her head as he lays her down delicately. One agonising kiss after another. Hands and mouths exploring one last time. It could be hours or it could be mere minutes, he doesn’t know, time always was a suggestion with them.

When he finally enters her, it’s _tender_ and _brutal_ and _devastating_ all at once. It’s almost too much - the rise and fall of their bodies, the emotion in his shaky breaths, his desperate grip onto her, as if he could hold her here in this halcyon moment forever by sheer will.

They ride a slow rhythm together for what seems like an eternity. Partners until the end. Or at least the morning.

He wants to make this last, for it to impact her as much as it does him, but she feels too good beneath him, enveloping him, and it’s more than he can bear. He chokes a lump that rises in his throat as his eyes well up. He’s close, _so close_ to unravelling in more ways than one.

She’s trembling, from the want that’s built up over the years and threatens to erupt like a volcano destroying everything around it, but more so from the _overwhelmingness_ of it all. She knows that if she ever succumbs to his gravity, she might never find her way out. So she doesn’t come, denies herself this one pleasure. Because if she does, it would be a physical admission of her love.

He blinks back the tears and wills himself not to empty into her before she finds her release, but it’s too late. His body heaves silently above her, wracked with emotion. All she can do is circle her arms around him, holding him close, guilt washing over her that she _can’t_ or _won’t_ reciprocate his feelings, kissing him in a way that feels like pleas for forgiveness.

They stay entangled like that for a long time after, though he rolls over to the side so as not to crush her. He takes in the last breaths of her scent and sweeps his hands lightly over her body, intimately, to map her into his dreams.

No words are spoken.

None are needed. Everything they’ve ever needed to say has already been said.

He waits till she’s fast asleep before he leaves. It would be too desolate and tragic to walk away if she were awake, if he could do it at all. Maybe he’s a coward. But maybe he’s tried his best.

He understands now that the fairytale isn’t the love he or everyone expected, but the love they put into their dream together, the gold they fought tooth and nail for.

And although it hurts him to admit it, and goes against everything his heart has ever wanted, this will one day be enough for him. Not today, but _one day_.

It’s a good ending. A different type of happily ever after.

Because they were happy, weren’t they?

~ FIN ~

**Author's Note:**

> Song lyrics anyone? (Just to stab you in the heart a little more)
> 
> Turn down the lights  
Turn down the bed  
Turn down these voices inside my head  
Lay down with me  
Tell me no lies  
Just hold me close, don't patronize  
Don't patronize me  
'Cause I can't make you love me if you don't  
You can't make your heart feel something it won't  
Here in the dark, in these final hours  
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power  
But you won't, no you won't  
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't  
I'll close my eyes, then I won't see  
The love you don't feel when you're holding me  
Morning will come and I'll do what's right  
Just give me till then to give up this fight  
And I will give up this fight  
'Cause I can't make you love me if you don't  
You can't make your heart feel something it won't  
Here in the dark, in these final hours  
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power  
But you won't, no you won't  
'Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't
> 
> Please come yell at me in the comments or on Twitter @lapetitemort20 (but keep it kind even if we differ in opinions)


End file.
